The military recommendations issued Wednesday by the Iraq Study Group are based more on hope than history and run counter to assessments made by some of its own military advisers.

Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States has struggled in vain to tamp down the violence in Iraq and to build up the capability of Iraq's security forces. Now the study group is positing that the United States can accomplish in little more than one year what it has failed to carry out in three.

In essence, the study group is projecting that a rapid infusion of American military trainers will so improve the Iraqi security forces that virtually all of the United States combat brigades can be withdrawn by the first quarter of 2008.

"Based on where we are now we can't get there," said General Jack Keane, the retired army chief of staff, who served on the group's panel of military advisers. Keane said the report's conclusions reflect more "the absence of political will in Washington than the harsh realities in Iraq."

General George Casey, the senior American commander in Iraq, developed a plan in June that called for gradually drawing down the number of American brigade combat teams to 5 to 6 by December 2007 from the 14 brigades the United States had at the time.

In keeping with this approach, American troops in Baghdad began to cut back on their patrols in the capital, calculating that Iraqi security forces would pick up the slack.

But no sooner did Casey present his plan in Washington than it had to be deferred. With sectarian violence soaring in Baghdad the United States reinforced its troops there. More American soldiers are now involved in security operations in Baghdad than Iraqi troops.

Now, the Iraqi Study Group is essentially proposing to take Casey's plan off the shelf and carrying it further. The study group's recommendations were not discussed with the retired officers who serve on the group's "Military Senior Advisor Panel," several of those officers said.

Military experts say there are several serious problems with the panel's recommendation. First, it underestimates the challenge of building a capable Iraqi security force. After several years of desultory efforts, the United States has reorganized its program to upgrade and better prepare the American advisers who are assigned to Iraqi units. But training the Iraqi Army is more than a matter of teaching them combat skills. It requires transforming the character of the force.

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"The new Iraqi Army will need years to become equal to the challenge posed by a persistent insurgency and terrorist threat," Lieutenant Colonel Carl Grunow, a former military adviser, wrote in a recent issue of Military Review.

One big problem, he notes, is that the Iraqi military is not proficient in counterinsurgency operations or sensitive to risk of civilian casualties.

"They are still fighting their last war, the high-intensity Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, a war with clear battle lines fought with mass military formations, and one in which civilians on the battlefield were a nuisance, and not a center of gravity," he wrote. "The new I.A. must learn to fight using strategies and tactics far different than those used in the past and largely alien to the new army."

Even if the number of American advisers is increased, it is highly unlikely that the Iraqi military could be prepared to conduct operations largely independently and successfully in little more than a year, American officers said.

The rapid withdrawal of American combat forces will also deprive the new Iraqi military of the opportunity to work as partners with the Americans in combined operations, which would help them further develop their skills.

Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general, said in an interview that the overall concept of withdrawing American forces as the Iraqis build up their military capability was sound. But he argued that the specific recommendations by the panel raised a risk: if all of the American combat brigades were withdrawn the thousands of advisers that remained might find themselves caught in an escalating civil war and attached to units whose political loyalties. With American military power in the country vastly reduced, he said, the advisors might even be taken hostage or killed.

"They came up with a political thought then got to tinkering with tactical ideas that in my view don't make any sense," said McCaffrey. "This is a recipe for national humiliation."

A last issue is that the violence in Iraq is growing, as the study group's report notes. It may take the combined efforts of American combat units and Iraqi security forces to try to arrest the spiraling violence. In the end, that task may not be feasible. But it is even less likely that the Iraqi military could soon take on such a massive challenge largely on its own.